


Sins of a Father

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Uther is Trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 06:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: You hold him in your hands and he is delicate, fragile, in a way you’ve never experienced before. His skin, still red with birth and the faintest glimmer of downy gold upon his head. Arthur wails, eyes screwed shut and pink mouth searching for the mother he will never know, and in that moment you know, with the same certainty you know your own name, that you would do anything to protect him. Anything.





	Sins of a Father

You hold him in your hands and he is delicate, fragile, in a way you’ve never experienced before. His skin’s still red with birth and the faintest glimmer of downy gold upon his head. Arthur wails, eyes screwed shut and pink mouth searching for the mother he will never know, and in that moment you know, with the same certainty you know your own name, that you would do anything to protect him. Anything.

All you can think is that he is so small, for the kingdom that rest on his shoulders. You don’t remember ever fitting in another’s palms, and you worry about how you will strengthen him so that he can carry the weight of his own destiny. You’ve heard the prophecies, tried to quash the rumors. Not because you are afraid of the men who might come for this promised king, but because you are afraid of what living up to that king might do to this babe, cradled in your arms.

You don’t recognize it at the time, but you love him. More than yourself, more than your kingdom, more than life.

You watch him grow, so slowly at first. You think it’s your fault, that you don’t carry him enough. You think that if you headed the healers words, swaddled him against your bosom, then perhaps he’d flourish. But he stays little and the nurses carry him around in small baskets or strapped to their backs as they go about their days. It makes you nervous, and in turn you make them nervous. You leave him to their care when you reduce a girl to tears as she feeds him. He cries for days, face red and eyes crusted. Your own lungs ache by the end.

You are careful around him, after that. You keep him in a cot in your own room but you do not hold him. When he cries, you insure that he is instantly soothed, and when he is ill you import remedies from across the border. Gaius raises his brows, both at you and the cost, but the winter before he turns two he takes ill with a fever that has felled your heartiest knight. You worry Gaius will not return before his spine creeps through his skin.

Gaius returns three nights before Yule, a concoction that gleams and smells faintly of lilac at the ready. There is something in his eyes, a sort of wariness that concerns you. “Magic,” he says, “is banned, by your own hand.”

He hands you the vial, and you know that you have a choice to make. Gaius leaves, hands clasped behind his back. He doesn’t want to know what you do, but he nods when Arthur toddles towards him three days later.

He grows quickly after that. Shoots up so fast you blink, and he’s gnawing at your knees. Gaius wants you to let him roam with the other boys, to play in the mud and to skin his knees. But you alone understand the responsibility he must learn, and so you empty coffers on lessons and instructors from all corners of the known world.

You do not teach him the curses that brought him into the world, but you teach him the wrongness of those who bend nature to their whims. You do it for  _ his  _ sake, so that he might never make the decisions you have made. So that guilt might never grey his beard the way it has your own.  

He picks up his first sword before he can recite his first ballad, and pride blooms in you so fiercely your cheeks burn with it. He swings, clumsy and wild, but with a grace you recognize as that of a natural warrior.

The knights are boisterous in their support, swinging him between their arms and tossing him from their shoulders. They parry with him, teach him the fighter’s dance. He spends months with them, on the pitch. You try not to hover, try not to soften the blows, but the first time he screams, the first time his wrist hangs crooked, you threaten to behead your entire army. It is only Gaius calm words that keep the men alive that night.

In the morning, when Arthur comes into your room, when he curls into your side, eyes rimmed red and wrist bound tight, you hold him close and bury your head in the soft blond curls. You take a day then, to tell him the stories of how you earned your kingdom. To whisper into his ears all the things you hope he might accomplish by your side. He sleeps in the afternoon, and by nightfall you are both feasting on the honey cakes the cook sent up and gossiping about the children of the court. If he blushes for both the lords and the ladies, you consider that a problem for another day.

By the time he reaches your hips, you are afraid of him. There is a fairness in his cheeks that reminds you of his mother, a softness to his skin that he did not inherit from you. He carries the barn cats on his shoulders and picks the ruffians up from the street. You’ve seen him slip bread into the mouths of stray pups.

He dips his head in displeasure when your eyes find him, and you know it is because of the set of your brows. You cannot help it though, every day you see more and more of  _ her  _ in him, even as his shoulders broaden and his chin fuzzes.

You push him then, harder and harder. You challenge him on the pitch, leave bruises along his thighs. He needs to be prepared for every strike, needs to be able to move through the pain. You lecture him until even the stars have grown weary, and you wake him before the crows’ dreams begin to fade. The circles under his eyes are paltry, compared to those of the people he will one day command. He fights you, then. Flings his scrolls into the fire and lodges swords in the mud.

The first time you catch him in the stables, pants rucked around his ankles, caught between a maid and her brother, you string him up in the town square and carve your displeasure into his back. You tell him then, of the position he holds and the sacrifices he must make.  _ The crown,  _ you tell him,  _ is as much an image as you are. One must uphold the other. _

He hates you. He tells you so often and loudly, but he does not disgrace your throne again. You think, for a moment, that he has only gotten better at hiding it. Youthful frustration drips from his skin though, and you weep for the indiscretions you have denied him. He must learn now, which rules are truly worth breaking.

By the time he is a man, distance has sprung between you. You cannot remember how to bridge it. He has heart, so much so that you wonder how it is contained beneath his skin, trapped behind his ribs. You have tried to teach him the boundaries of stone walls and lines on a map. A man cannot lead with his heart, he must lead with his head.

Arthur wants to show you that he can lead with both, and you fear the dreams that have plagued you, the friend who strikes him in the heart. You want him to  _ bury  _ that blasted organ, before you find him beneath stone markers.

One day, you watch his world explode in the best of ways. It stumbles into town sheathed in pale skin and wearing a dark cloud of hair, and Arthur has fallen before he even stands. Everything in you collapse because  _ it is too soon, he is too young, and the boy is all wrong.  _ But you know your son, know the boy who sneaks candies under your pillow on your name day, and barters with the cook for cinnamon swirls on Yule.

He will have the boy, at all cost, and so you gift him the boy the only way you know how. But the boy has an aura, one you’ve seen in your nightmares. When he looks at you, you know. This is the promise of the prophecies, and this is also your doom.

You pray then, for the first time since you held a newborn babe in your hands. You sink to your knees and you vow to keep him safe, to keep them both safe. At all cost. You cannot undo the sins of your own past, cannot bring back the bodies of the innocent, cannot re-pen all the burnt knowledge. But you can create a path for these boys, can open the doors for a kingdom unlike any other this world has seen.

It is not easy. You cannot ever wash the disdain from your mouth when you watch his eyes glow gold, when you see the pleasure his tricks offer your son. You do not agree to break Camelot’s rules, to create room for new ones. You remind them they cannot marry, that Arthur may love him all he wishes, but that Arthur must take a wife and produce an heir. When he takes the hand of a princess, you all understand the strange dichotomy Camelot will be ruled by. You tell them they can never let Camelot see behind the veil.

You are old when the curse rides into town, chin up and back straight. He could be the lover’s brother, both in coloring and in prowess, but when they stand before each other, they could not be more different. There is no grace to a warlock’s battle. No balancing of bodies or swaying of bones. They sling their arms out, light explodes from their fingers.

You’ve watched this chaotic dance before though, seen the moves a thousand times. When the druid raises his arms, when the gold sword falls from the sky, you scream.

You feel too far away to save your son. All the rage, all the hate that radiates off the druid boy curls around your feet and you hear your wife’s last breath, your son’s first crise, the screams of everyone in between. His lover stares at you, the same horror draining from his face and you grab him then.

You have only prayed three times in your life; when the crown was placed upon your head, when your wife wept for a child, and when you saw love trip into Arthur’s life. You pray now though, pull repentance from the barren wasteland of your soul. You look into the golden eyes of your son’s lover and though he is not a god, you beg him. Take all the wretchedness in you and use it to bleed the life from your veins. Let your breath stall so that Arthur’s lungs might be filled.

The lover is not a god, but you think he might commune with one. Your eyes grow heavy, the sounds of the world fade away. You think you feel a hand against your cheek, but you’re fading fast.

When you wake, you are confused. It is not Arthur’s face before you, but one you have not seen for many years. She smiles and takes your hand. Kisses your cheeks. You want to enter into her embrace, want to inhale her scent, but you turn away. You need to make sure Arthur is okay. She places a hand over your heart and a pain you weren’t expecting cuts through you.

A million images flit before your eyes: Arthur weeping above you. Gold eyes and a weeping willow where you last lay. Small children with black curls and blue eyes and skin that glows. A kingdom that flourishes, even when the weather is harsh.

A son that honors his father, that wears his crown proud. A king that sinks to his knees to pray, and wears the scars of his father’s sin with pride.

 


End file.
